Keith Richards turns 70 on his 30th wedding anniversary

posted by Chris Willman | Yahoo! Music
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2 years ago

(Yahoo!) - If there’s anything stranger than the fact that Keith Richards has lived to be 70, it may be that his marriage has lived to be 30.

Both occasions are marked on December 18. The Rolling Stones’ guitarist used the occasion of his 40th birthday in 1983 to wed Patti Hansen. That’s one way to avoid forgetting your anniversary, no matter what substances you might have floating in your bloodstream, up to and including your father’s ashes.

Surprisingly, 30 years of apparent marital bliss is not a record for a Rolling Stone; Charlie Watts has been married for 49 years. But the three-record mark still astonishes anyone who likes to remember Richards as one of rock’s wildest-living unclean livers.

“Thank God for Mrs. Patti Hansen, who has finally got her way and put me on the straight and narrow,” Richards said in a recently published interview with Men’s Journal. “I mean the proof is in the pudding: great kids.” The couple have two daughters, Theodora, 28, and Alexandra, 27, both of whom are considered to have inherited their ex-model mom’s looks. (Richards also has a son and a daughter from his earlier relationship with Anita Pallenberg, in addition to a son who passed away. Altogether, he has four grandkids.)

The “straight and narrow” part has been a function of Richards’ life since he hit his head in a fall and underwent brain surgery in 2009, though it’s not so narrow that he doesn’t still indulge in drink and weed, not being the all-or-nothing kind of recovery adherent.